Background: Recently, the importance of psychological health has increased among military personnel worldwide. The association between diet and mental health has been demonstrated in previous studies. Therefore, the current survey conducted to study this association among military personnel. Methods: The original cross-sectional study was designed and conducted from July 2017 to January 2018. 258 male personnel were selected through convenience random sampling method. A semi-quantitative food frequency (FFQ) questionnaire used to evaluate dietary intake. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS) questionnaire was used to evaluate depression, anxiety, and stress. Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was to evaluate self-esteem condition. Results: The Western, Mediterranean and traditional dietary patterns were extracted. Multi-nominal regression was shown that higher adherence to a traditional dietary pattern led to mild depression score (P= 0.007, β= -1.89). There were no statistically significant differences between dietary patterns and anxiety score. Our statistical analyses found a significant association between the lowest tertile of western dietary pattern and moderate stress (P=0.06, β=0.93). In regression models, after adjusting for potential confounders, the results unchanged related to adherence between western dietary pattern and moderate stress (P=0.09). There was no statistically significant association between the major dietary patterns with the risk of anxiety score in the crude and adjusted models. Conclusions: The findings from this study indicate that adherence to a Mediterranean and western dietary patterns led to a reduction and an increase in mean depression and stress scores respectively.
